The Fontana Unified School District has reached a $14 million settlement with attorneys for four alleged victims of sexual abuse by former teacher Garry Lee Gorgei, who taught at Southridge High School from 1996 to 1999.
Following reports at the school of apparent inappropriate behavior between the teacher and some students, principal David Linzey decided to simply move Gorgei to another school rather than report him to the police. That’s when the abuse allegedly began between 1997 and 1998.
Among attorneys who are experts in the issue of child sexual abuse in schools, this move is known as “passing the trash” back and forth within the district, “in a concerted effort to cover up Gorgei’s sexual abuse crimes against minors.”
In total, Garry Lee Georgie was accused of abusing five girls.
“He stole my childhood. He stole my innocence,” was the statement of Mrs. Krista Orozco, one of the four alleged victims of sexual abuse by Professor Garry Lee Gorgei.
Ms. Orozco told KTLA in December 2020, when the lawsuit was filed, that the man rubbed, fondled and hugged her two to three times a week during sixth and seventh grade, and wrote dozens of letters expressing his affection.
Gorgei was hired by the Fontana Unified School District (FUSD) in September 1996, but within his first few months on the job, he was already sexually abusing underage students at Southridge High School, according to the lawsuit.
Prior to sexually abusing the plaintiff, Krista Orozco, school district administrators “had already received a multitude of complaints and reports of Gorgei’s inappropriate behavior with his female students,” according to the documents, but law enforcement was not notified.
Among other inappropriate acts by the teacher, Gorgei drove female students off campus in his personal vehicle during lunchtime and is described as having kissed at least one of them on the ear.
20 years in San Quentin
Colorado Springs native Gary Lee Georgie—now 64—is serving a 20-year sentence at San Quentin State Prison in Northern California.
Ms. Orozco’s story and the other victims’ lawsuit against the Fontana Unified School District were able to proceed because, in January 2020, AB 218 went into effect, introducing several key changes that expand the rights of victims of child sexual abuse.
In fact, there is now no longer a statute of limitations for civil actions seeking recovery of damages as a result of child sexual assault that occurs on or after January 1, 2024.
However, certain requirements remain for actions brought by a plaintiff who is 40 years of age or older to demonstrate a reasonable and meritorious cause to bring the action before the Court.
For childhood sexual assaults that occurred before 2024, there is a California statute of limitations: survivors of childhood sexual abuse must file a claim before they turn 40 or within five years of discovering that the psychological injury or illness that occurred during adulthood was caused by the sexual assault.
Ms. Orozco was 37 years old when she filed her lawsuit.
They reached an agreement
The $14 million settlement was reached in March, but was not announced by the law firm Manly, Stewart & Finaldi until Tuesday, July 23.
“In the hands of a jury, this case was very risky for them, given the history of abuse,” the victims’ attorney, Morgan A. Stewart, told La Opinión. “They knew it in the late 1990s and beyond the year 2000; they really had no choice but to resolve it.”
Stewart said he gave some credit to the FUSD administration “for stepping up and getting the settlement done,” he added. “We should never have to see the case in the courtroom, and since they paid the full amount, [$14 millones]it is a good indication that we did our job well.”
In 1999, her last year of teaching, Gorgei left the Fontana Unified School District and moved to Colorado Springs.
He was also a teacher at Fontana High School, but no students at that school have been identified as victims.
The former teacher was arrested in February 2020 on suspicion of molesting five girls.
Two years earlier, then-Southridge Middle School Principal David Linzey and then-Assistant Principal Miki McCabe provided Gorgei with a conference memo where they discussed his sexual misconduct involving female students that included, among other things, kissing a student on the ear.
San Bernardino County prosecutors initially charged Garry Lee Gorgei with 25 felony counts, but under a plea agreement, Gorgei pleaded guilty in March 2022 to seven felony counts of lewd acts with a child.
Stewart noted that four lawsuits filed between March 2021 and April 2024 were consolidated into one and the settlement exhausted the school district’s coverage with its insurance company.
“It was horrific abuse,” the attorney said. “Unfortunately there was too much intimidation; the environment in the school district was that they had that knowledge and they ignored it, and they didn’t take the appropriate steps to protect the girls.”
Jacqueline Rodriguez, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, told La Opinión that Gina Florick was the prosecutor in the case against Professor Gorgei and Judge Bridgid McCann imposed the 20-year prison sentence on August 17, 2022.
“Whenever we talk to students we make sure they know that adults at school should not ask them to keep secrets and should not touch them,” Rodriguez said.
“For parents, we say just keep those lines of communication open with your kids and then make sure they know that if they are at school and they feel threatened or something is wrong, they can go to a counselor, another teacher or the police.”
FUSD Superintendent Miki Rene Inbody’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
School in Redlands
The law firm of Manly, Stewart & Finaldi also represented victims of sexual misconduct by teachers and staff in the Redlands Unified School District.
“I think they realized this was a case they couldn’t win,” Stewart said.
Indeed, that district settled another child sexual abuse case, in which they had to pay $45.5 million to resolve 16 sexual abuse lawsuits against former students.
The school district did not admit fault in either case involving former Clement Middle School teacher Timothy Rochester.
Timothy Rochester allegedly harassed, assaulted and sexually abused the victim in 2003. The complaint stated that the administration investigated the alleged sexual predator but took no action such as removing him from teaching, reporting him to authorities or separating him from the victim.
74 years in prison
In February 2020, the same law firm sued the Redlands Unified School District on behalf of the fourth victim of a pedophile teacher, Sean Lopez.
In 2006, the victim, a student at Clement High School, was abused by Sean Lopez, who was convicted of 60 felony counts of sexual abuse and sentenced to 74 years in prison.
At the time of the alleged sexual abuse, the victim was between 14 and 16 years old.
According to the lawsuit, school administrators received complaints that Lopez met with young male students in his classroom during and after school hours and engaged in graphic discussions about pornography and sex.
The complaint alleged that Lopez told the boys he was conducting scientific experiments. In his classroom or at his residence, he would give them alcohol and pornography, masturbate them, perform oral sex on them and collect their semen for his “studies.” The abuser would photograph and videotape the sexual acts as part of this process.